


Those Who Can, Do

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Old Kingdom - Garth Nix
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 14:36:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3137927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam makes it up as he goes along.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Those Who Can, Do

**Author's Note:**

> An explanation for Sam being registered as Sameth Abhorsen at school: one, he was the Abhorsen-in-Waiting by dint of being his mother’s son and his sister not showing any aptitude for it, and two, if the Old Kingdom’s royal family have a last name, I haven’t heard of it. Colonel Horyse calls Sabriel ‘Miss Abhorsen’ at one point, so I presume she went with that as her family name. She had to have been registered as something at Wyverley College.

**0-  sweetly sleep**

 

            Sameth was a quiet baby. Untroublesome, sleeping easily; more solemn than Ellimere had been, but also less noisy, less prone to childhood diseases.

 

            “He’s so - sweet,” Sabriel observed, cradling her son in one arm and buttoning her tabard at the shoulder. Her voice was slightly puzzled.

 

            Touchstone’s brow crinkled, and he removed the heavy circlet that obstructed the expression and laid it on his wife’s dressing table. “Ellimere was sweet as well,” he pointed out.

 

            “Not quite like this,” Sabriel said, and got up and laid Sameth in the cradle in the corner of their room, tucking the blanket gently over him and letting him cling to the Ancelstierran-style teddy-bear she had had made up for him. The people of Belisaere were still slightly confused by their Abhorsen Queen with her odd southern ways, but by now even Jall Oren had grasped that suggestions that the King and Queen really needn’t sleep in the same room as their infant son were not likely to be well-received. “He looks... like everything is uncomplicated and straightforward for him. As if he knows exactly what he is.”

 

            “A born Ahborsen, perhaps.” Touchstone came up behind her, and wrapped his arms around her shoulders.

 

            Sabriel looked down at her son, and chewed on her lip. There was something... off. Something... not as she had expected. She smiled fleetingly at Touchstone. “Let’s hope so.”

  
**5-  to give innocence the lie**

 

            When Sameth was five, Touchstone started to teach him Charter magic. He found it a nice way to relax at the end of the day, spending half an hour helping his son master a new mark, and Sam took to it so well that it was very rewarding as well. He would go over a mark with him a few times, see him cast it for himself, and take a moment to enjoy his son’s delight before packing him off to bed and returning to his duties.

 

            Unfortunately, there were _consequences_ to being so naturally good at something like that. Touchstone tore down the hall, scattering courtiers and functionaries as he headed for his son’s room at top speed. Jall Oren had only said ‘Prince Sameth... accident... miscast Charter magic’, and the king had been out of the room and halfway down the corridor. Finally, finally he reached his son’s room and barged through the door, almost bowling over the guard standing outside.

 

            He inhaled sharply, catching a faint hint of singed hair on the air, and strode towards Sam’s bed, displacing two nursemaids, a nanny and the doctor’s assistant, but not the doctor or his wife. Sabriel rose quickly from where she was sitting on the side of Sam’s bed, stroking his forehead, and caught Touchstone’s wrists.

 

            “It’s all right,” she said, her light, cool voice calming him. “He’s fine. He just burnt his eyebrows off and scorched his fingers a little, that’s all. He gave himself a bit of a fright.”

 

            “I told him not to use Charter magic when he was on his own,” Touchstone muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose in despair.

 

            “He was showing off for Ellimere, because she’s going off to school soon,” Sabriel said dryly. “He wanted to prove he was as strong and special as she is, even though he isn’t going all the way to Ancelstierre.”

 

            Touchstone snorted, and leant over his son’s bed, brushing the slightly singed curls back from the small, peaceful face. “What was he trying to do?”

 

            “I don’t know,” Sabriel said, tucking the blanket more firmly over Sam. “Gerrit, where’s Sameth’s teddy? Elashiel said she was watching them playing with toy boats in the fountain when it happened. She thinks Sam was trying to make one of the boats sail around the fountain by itself, except that he mistook the mark and set it on fire by accident. Luckily, Ellimere pushed him face-first into the water, so he’s slightly crispy and a little damp but not seriously hurt.”

 

            “Clever girl,” Touchstone murmured, but couldn’t crush his overbearing feelings of guilt. If he’d told Sam more often that he must not use Charter magic when he was on his own, not yet, maybe the boy wouldn’t have been tempted. He could have been seriously hurt.

 

            “It’s all right, Touchstone,” Sabriel said, rubbing his back. “Children of that age bounce. I saw enough of the younger girls at Wyverley to know that much.”

 

            Touchstone sighed. “It’s my fault.”

 

            Sabriel, no more tolerant of self-pity than she ever had been, thumped him solidly between the shoulder-blades. “He has to learn.”

 

            Woken by their talk, Sameth shifted, his dark eyes flickering open, and murmured “Dadda.”

 

            “I’m here, Sam,” Touchstone said, taking his son’s tiny hand in his very large one.

 

            “I didn’t mean to, Dadda,” Sameth said earnestly, staring up at him with huge innocent eyes. “I didn’t _mean_ to. It was a _naxdident_.”

 

            Touchstone, deciphering this with some difficulty, smiled. “Go to sleep, Sam.”

  
**10- morbid curiosity**

 

            “But how’s it _work_?” Nick Sayre said, leaning over the table to impress his curiosity on Sam, his blue eyes bright behind huge wire-rimmed spectacles that didn’t fit him very well and kept falling down his nose.

 

            Sam leaned back slightly, put off his prep (which wasn’t difficult, since it was a passage to be translated in what the Ancelstierrans called High Ancelstierran and Old Kingdom citizens referred to as the Old Runes, and Sam found it totally incomprehensible). “How does what work?” he hissed, conscious of the hovering prefects and the fact that Nick was a bit weird, getting himself into all sorts of trouble for no better reason than that he wanted to know something. He really was morbidly curious, as this particular episode showed. Sam had a few friends at Somersby, all of whom would probably be frightened off if he used even the slightest bit of Charter magic in front of them, let alone ask stupid questions about it.

 

            “You know,” Nick said impatiently. “Your _magic_.”

 

            “Uh,” Sam said hopelessly, and marshalled the few facts he knew about the beginning of the Charter and the Five Great Charters. It was more than most ten-year-olds, but still not a lot. “Well, once upon a time, there was a lot of magic everywhere, but it was unbound and wild and raw, so it was very dangerous. Then the Nine Bright Shiners came and made the Five Great Charters-“

 

            “Why are there only five Great Charters if there were nine Shiners?” Nick interrupted, floppy blond hair falling into his face with excitement.

 

            “I don’t know. And the Five Great Charters are, um, the Charter Stones in Belisaere, the Wall, the King’s bloodline, the Daughters of the Clayr, and the Abhorsen’s bloodline.”

 

            “And you’re two of those, aren’t you? Your mum’s an Abhorsiwhatsit and your Dad’s the King?”

 

            “Abhor _sen_ ,” Sam corrected in slightly too loud a voice, irritated, and got prodded in the back by a prefect.

 

            “Sayre, Abhorsen, be quiet and do your prep,” the older boy said sternly, his voice echoing throughout the hall. Sam sank into his seat at the bench, mortified, but Nick just beamed at the prefect.

 

            When the older boy had moved on, Nick leaned across the table and hissed: “Why’s your last name Abhorsen if it’s your _mum’s_ family name?”

 

           Sam sighed.

  
**15- this sceptered isle**

 

            “...demi-paradise, this fortress built by Nature for herself against infection and the hand of war, this happy breed of men, this little world,” Cooke Minor read aloud, pausing in all the wrong places and (if the look on his face was anything to go by) striking at Mr. Mertley’s very soul with his poor rendition of classic poetry.

 

            Sam’s attention wandered, drifting to the window, and the bright sunny day outside. A group of younger boys were playing pick-up cricket on the lawn under the benevolent and snoozing eye of the High Ancelstierran master. Sam’s eyes narrowed. There was someone who looked like quite a promising spin bowler, there...

 

            “Abhorsen! Regardless of Cooke’s shortcomings as an orator, you _will_ pay attention!... You too, Sayre!”

 

            Sam straightened, snapping back to the lesson. “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

 

            Mr. Mertley grunted, and gestured to Cooke Minor to carry on. Sam fixed his eyes on the text in front of him, and listened to his classmate bumbling through the speech. A shaft of sunlight fell across his back, warming his shoulders, he could hear the soothing whack of a cricket ball hitting a cricket bat and roar of teenage boys egging each other on, and he wasn’t being required to do anything he found difficult... it was at times like these when he could almost believe in speeches like the one Cooke Minor was trying to read aloud.

 

            Even if he was almost certain that this one had been written about Belisaere, not Corvere, as Mr. Mertley insisted. Come on – ‘island set in a silver sea’? It was almost obvious.

  
**20- forever and ever and ever amen.**   
  


            Sam waded through the muck that was currently the Wallmakers’ camp. There were exactly ten of them now, including himself, and things were going swimmingly; he had a base in the Ratterlin delta, easily defensible from the Dead, close enough to Mogget to keep an eye on him, and close enough to the Southerlings refugees’ land to keep an eye on _them_. There were a number who had been housed in Belisaere, but most had been given land along the more southern shores of the Ratterlin, which was a little close to the Borderlands but not too much so. More importantly, it was a decently long way away from Edge, and situated close to a lot of running water, which the Southerlings had latched onto as the least frightening way of staving off the terrifying creatures that they had almost been turned into. In vain Sam had suggested that they start Charter-baptising their children; they were still too scared of Charter magic.

 

            To be honest, it had been a massive step forward when a party of them had brought a wagon to him to mend the other day, so he and Thidan, who had once been a blacksmith, had had a go at it and its defective wheels. And now it was all working and perfect and spelled to repel water and fire, and it would be just fantastic if he could find the group of Southerlings it belonged to already.

 

            Sam stared gloomily around at the rain-soaked tents and makeshift work-huts, which seemed totally devoid of people except for one very tired and grumpy Daughter of the Clayr whose Paperwing had been brought down by a storm yesterday evening. For lack of anyone else to ask, he waded over to her. “Ma’am?” he called.

 

            The fur-covered lump sheltering in the Paperwing didn’t stir. The Paperwing itself was alert, and its eyes flicked sideways to measure up Sam. He tried to ignore it, and cudgelled his brains for the Daughter of the Clayr’s actual name.

 

            “Lissel?” he yelled, having remembered it.

 

             A mussed blonde head appeared, and glared over the side. The glare was taken down a few notches when the Daughter of the Clayr realised who had addressed her. “Good day, Prince Sameth. Is something wrong?”  


            “I’m looking for that group of Southerlings. Did you see where they went?”

 

            “Er.” Lissel sat up and blinked for a moment, then shoved her hair off her face. “The mess tent, I think. Your highness.”

 

           “Thank you,” Sam said, and added: “Garrel says the winds will be fair for the north this afternoon.”

 

           “I know,” Lissel said, and bit back a yawn. “Your highness.”

 

           He went off, dodging around the tents and Thidan’s makeshift forge, until he got to the large mess tent. Sure enough, he could hear laughter and Southerling accents. He lifted the flap of the tent, and ducked inside.

 

          The conversation going on halted instantly, the Southerlings still all too on edge, even two years after the Destroyer had been vanquished.

 

         Sam cleared his throat, repressing the impulse to raise his hands and show himself unarmed. “Uh, I’m looking for... Elen?”

 

        “Here,” said a woman’s voice, and one of the Southerlings stood from the bench she was sitting on. She had light eyes, and soft fawn-coloured hair, and such an air of command Sam was almost knocked off his feet. A blue scarf was wrapped around her neck and shoulders, and she looked as if she knew where she was going and what she was doing.

 

        He opened and closed his mouth once or twice and blinked futilely. “Ah, your wagon is ready.”

 

       “Thank you,” she said, her voice not as heavily accented as most Southerlings'. “I will come and pay for it.” She dug a small bag out of her pocket; it clinked with heavy coins.

 

        Sam thanked her, resolving to knock the price down a bit. “Would you come and sign the ledger for me?”

 

        “Of course,” the woman, Elen, said, and followed him back to his own tent, which doubled as their headquarters and where the accounts were kept.

 

        Sam dug out the ledger, and laid it on the table, flipping it open to a blank page and offering her a pen and inkbottle. She sat down, and signed; then passed the pen to him, and while he was dating and signing, looked around the small, cramped tent.

 

       “So this is where a prince of the Old Kingdom lives,” she observed suddenly.

 

       Sam paused. “When he takes it into his head to go off and build things, yes.”

 

       “Hm,” Elen said, and was silent for a moment. Sam finished his signature, and blew on the completed record. “You fixed the wagon with Charter magic?”

 

       “Yes,” Sam said, and had a horrendous thought. “Is that going to be a problem?”

 

        “No. No, I only asked because... it seems useful, this Charter magic.” Elen’s lips thinned. “People keep warning me that we are not safe without it.”

 

        “Well,” Sam said, unable to think of a way around this. “It’s true that most people can do some Charter magic. Some basic protective spells and things. And of course that helps. It is quite... dangerous, here.”

 

        “I know,” Elen said, rather dryly. There was a long pause, in which he watched her and she ignored him.

 

         “Tell me,” she said at last. “If I wanted to learn Charter magic, how would I do so?”

 

         Sam’s heart thumped hard, and he seemed to have a dry mouth and no air in his lungs all at once. He wondered if this was what it had been like for Nick, meeting Lirael – although Orannis had probably ruined the proper feeling of falling for someone. “You’d have to be Charter baptised first.” He brushed his fingers over his own mark, feeling it flare. “I know it looks like fire to you, but honestly, it doesn’t hurt. That’s the first step. Then you’d have to get someone to teach you.”

 

         He looked her in the eye, and knew exactly what to say next, as if everything was simple and straightforward. “If you wanted, I could arrange it.”


End file.
